Human reaction due to the influence of political and social circumstances in Harold Pinter's Birthday Party And W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory's Cathleen Ni Houlihan

Abstract

         The study sheds the light on the theme of Human reaction due to the influence of political and social circumstances in Harold Pinter's Birthday Party And  W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory's Cathleen Ni Houlihan.  The current paper will explain how Harold and Yeats used the theme of Human reaction due to the influence of political and social circumstances in their play, and how each writer tried to clarify the theme of identity in the society and the state in which he lives, and the impact of political and social circumstances on the behavior of the individual and society during the period of writing the play. The theme is explained in The Birthday Party (1958) by connecting some of the character’s acts and behaviors to twentieth-century British culture and explain the issue faced by this generation, which is wasting their lives away in search of their identity and personality . Additionally, Pinter gave his protagonist (Stanley) a nameless personality and a particular social class; the characters either embrace the English personality  that has been thrust upon them by others or lie to those around them about who they really are. The main concerns in Pinter's Birthday Party center on the issue of a  personality , how young people have abandoned traditional norms, and how this uneasy search for new ideals has stressed the post-war societal framework. While Yeats used the theme of Human reaction due to the influence of political and social circumstances in different way, because he focused on national personality . Yeats' play Cathleen ni Houlihan highlights how he was able to use and fuse the Irish national personality  with his own culture. Yeats' decision to depict an elderly woman rather than a youthful one has had a significant impact on raising public awareness across the country and reviving Celtic culture. Yeats wanted to develop two distinct cultural functions. The first was for the welfare of the country, in which the young men choose to assist the elderly woman only for her benefit and not for their own. The second purpose had a deeper cultural significance and sought to revive Irish culture by restoring Celtic figures that were taken from Irish culture and used as central characters in his plays. As a result, Yeats reveals an urgent desire to restore ancient Irish culture in order to emphasize a national Irish personality .